2007-08-18 - 6:59 p.m.
Last weekend there was a show on VH1 called NY 77: The Coolest Year in Hell. I always thought that 1975 � with the infamous Daily News headline �FORD TO NY: DROP DEAD� (about Mayor Abe Beam�s unsuccessful negotiation with the federal government to bail the city out of impending bankruptcy) � was NYC�s nadir. But maybe that wasn�t the �coolest� year with the emergence of so much new art � hip-hop, punk rock, even disco, graffiti art, breakdancing, etc.
The show talked about that July�s blackout. A tremendous heat wave was beginning. The increased power demands of all the air conditioners may have led (although no one really knows) to upstate substations shutting down and a chain reaction that cut off all of New York City�s electricity. The background for all this was an economy in total chaos. Unemployment was sky-high. So were interest rates (mortgages were at 12%, 14%, and up). Gas was only available on alternate days.
The blackout resulted in a complete breakdown of social consciousness. People took the opportunity presented by the blackout to run amok. With no power, there were no alarms, and looting was widespread. There was general violence and rioting. Arson was rampant. In the largest night of arrest in city history, almost 4,000 people were locked up. Most of New York thought �Ah, surely this is the end. There is no tomorrow. I will end my days now, here in this dying city.�
And this blackout is my first memory. I was 3 years old; my sister hadn�t even been born yet. My grandparents were over at our apartment in Bay Ridge for some reason. My father was not in and I�ll talk about where he was in a minute. I remember their faces lit in the candles that were burning because the lights were out. But little kids love candles and I had seen lots of them before. I was too young to appreciate the unusual nature of the situation. So why do I remember it so well?
What I subconsciously picked up on was the fear. Not that I recognized it at the time and the adults around me were careful to keep up their game face. But the subliminal message that the grown-ups were terrified is I think what makes the memory stick in my head so well. Everyone around me was scared in part because they had lived through Los Angeles� Watts riots of 1965 and were afraid that something similar would happen in New York now. They were more immediately scared because my father was on the subway.
When the power went out, the train of course stopped and all the lights went off. The passengers were eventually evacuated by being escorted through a tunnel and going up an emergency exit stairway. My dad found himself in the middle of Brooklyn�s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, probably not the ideal spot for a white guy to be in the midst of rioting. He found a working pay phone (remember this was long before cell phones and he had to wait on quite a line to use it) and called my mother in a panic.
My mother (7 months pregnant at the time) became mission control for bailing out my dad. She called a friend of theirs, a mobster type who told her to have my dad wait at a certain address (probably a place controlled by the Mob) for him to show up. My father called back and she gave him the instructions. (Now I of course didn�t know any of this at the time; I only found it out recently from talking about the blackout with my mom.) Dad got met okay and driven back home.
I wonder to what extent this early memory informs my interest in urbanism. The last 30 years of New York City history are in many respects about the climb away from that rock-bottom hell. The 1970s and 1980s were certainly the �bad old days� for American cities generally. Today there�s an �urban renaissance� in the country as a whole and, as is noted in the VH1 show, luxury condos and cafes have replaced the old grit and grime of New York.
Some people may see this as a bad thing, a �softening�. But I don�t. Cities� ascent out of squalor and destitution into a glorious new era (an imagined return to the halcyon days of the past � except now there is a social inclusiveness that never could have been dreamt of in the past!) is simply beautiful. Sure, there are down sides to this. When I was little, there were people who lived in Manhattan who had blue-collar jobs like driving a bus and stuff. I�m not sure where they live now (New Jersey?), but it�s not Manhattan.
But figuring out how to provide for the less-well-off is a social policy task that is also a part of the nation�s rise. Now that our cities are beautiful (or at least much better than they once were), now that there is more wealth in the world, how do we spread the goodness around? This is a project that may never be complete. There is more to do always. We can all be a part of it. Get psyched.
� 2007 Geoff Gladstone
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